By Zack Sampson, News Staff
Student government officials proposed major changes this year, from overhauling the myNEU system to bringing Zipcars on campus for students, at their first fall Senate meeting Monday.
Student Government Association (SGA) cabinet members explained their short and long-term objectives to a full room of returning senators and prospective freshmen.
Tim LePage, vice president for student services, selected updates to myNEU, improved smoking policies and on-campus Zipcars as his focal interests. With the myNEU interface growing increasingly outdated, LePage said he would like to see a “complete overhaul” of the service, though he expects a long improvement process.
“[Information Services] agrees that it is starting to get a little outdated, but of course we can’t just say, ‘Change myNEU,’ because there are so many different aspects of it,” he said.
LePage also said he hopes to tighten the school’s often unenforced smoking policy, which many students have already complained to him about. He said smoke lingers around the entryways of on-campus buildings.
“It’s currently 25 feet within a building that you can’t smoke but that’s not really enforced, again, as anyone can see by going up to Snell (Library),” he said.
LePage hopes to bring a Zipcar station to Northeastern too, so students between the ages of 18 and 21 can travel to co-ops outside of the city more easily. He said students in this age bracket without their own vehicles often struggle to find an agency that will rent them a car.
According to LePage, discussion of a specific Zipcar lot location will come later in the planning process. Currently, Zipcars are available to 21-year-olds on Gainsborough Street, the Museum of Fine Arts, Westland Avenue and Columbus Avenue.
Though only a week into the semester, LePage said he has seen and received complaints about an already implemented new policy that prohibits students from using more than three meal swipes at Outtakes per day.
LePage said he approached dining services earlier in the calendar year after hearing students were dismayed by long lines and short supplies at Outtakes when people used up their remaining meal swipes every Friday.
“We weren’t looking to harm students in any way, and this seemed like it would be a good median because most students would be looking for about three meals a day there anyway,” he said. “It seems that most students’ concerns are that they can’t go at the end of the week to use all their meals, however there’s nothing preventing a student from using all their meals at Outtakes, it’s just how much they can use at a specific time.”
LePage said he and SGA will monitor the situation as the semester continues.
Also on SGA’s Fall 2011 docket is an initiative to create an NUin and transfer student mentor program, spearheaded by Vice President for Student Affairs Jonas Edwards-Jenks.
Edwards-Jenks said such students are often deprived of an adequate welcome week and a chance to get to know the Northeastern community.
“We need to put together a mentor program of former NUin alumni, transfer alumni, that take them to a hockey game, take them to the North End, take them to the library,” he said.
President Mike Sabo said he more broadly hopes to increase student access to SGA this year with programs such as Pint with the President, an event first proposed during his spring campaign.
“Pint with the President will happen, most likely, at the end of September for the first meeting, and I will pick a local place to start, and we’ll do a few of them throughout the year and we’ll change locations,” Sabo said. “I’m also going to have weekly office hours that I’ll post, as well as, once a week, I’ll be going to an area around campus – whether it be Centennial Quad, the dining hall – and students can see me and talk to me about what they want to see at this university.”
